Networks have enhanced our ability to communicate and access information by allowing one personal computer to communicate over a network (or network connection) with another personal computer and/or other networking devices, using electronic messages. When transferring an electronic message between personal computers or networking devices, the electronic message will often pass through a protocol stack that performs operations on the data within the electronic message (e.g., packetizing, routing, flow control).
Although, Internet Protocol Version 4 (IPv4) is still the dominant protocol of the Internet, its successor, Internet Protocol Version 6 (IPv6) is being deployed actively worldwide. The IPv6 network protocol provides that IPv6 hosts or host devices (e.g., image forming apparatuses and other devices) can configure themselves automatically (e.g., stateless address autoconfiguration) when connected to an IPv6 network using ICMPv6 neighbor discovery messages (e.g., Neighbor Discovery Protocol or NDP). When first connected to a network, an IPv6 host sends a link-local multicast neighbor solicitation request advertising its tentative link-local address for duplicate address detection (dad), and if no problem is encountered, the host uses the link-local address. The router solicitations are sent (or router advertisements are received depending on timing) to obtain network-layer configuration parameters, and routers respond to such a request with a router advertisement packet that contains network-layer configuration parameters.
With the implementation of IPv6 networks, it would be desirable to add additional power management options to a computer device and/or host device having IPv6 capabilities by including a software module or software application associated with the computer device and/or host device, and which uses ICMPv6 options for power management.